


Shared Resonance

by Oparu



Category: Star Trek: Voyager
Genre: Cross-Generational Friendship, Friendship, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 19:37:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/625800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oparu/pseuds/Oparu
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>B'Elanna never made an effort to be involved with Naomi's upbringing. <i>Voyager's</i> seemed to have more than enough teachers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shared Resonance

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dax's10thHost](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Dax%27s10thHost).



> written for VAMBs secret santa, 2012.

She never volunteered to babysit. Neelix, Tom, Kes, even the Captain and Chakotay-- all were giddy at the idea of babysitting. The captain was so busy B'Elanna wasn't sure she'd even had time to hold Naomi more than once or twice, but the rest of them, the rest of the ship it seemed like, was enamoured with the baby. She didn't have anything against babies, not really. It wasn't their fault they were sticky and needy and they couldn't be in engineering. Since she all but lived in engineering, she watch Naomi grow from a distance. 

She seemed to leap from crawling to walking, muttering nonsense to speaking in words that were all the more complex because she had so many questions. Just listening to Naomi and Neelix, then Naomi and Seven of Nine made her exhausted. Did the Borg assimilate all of the capacity to be frustrated right out of her? How did Seven put up with a constant stream of questions that really weren't going in any direction? She'd watched them together once in the cargo bay, over her own PADD of work and realised, abruptly, that they were friends because the last time Seven of Nine was human, she'd been about Naomi's age (give or take a few years for those Katarian genes). Seven of Nine, former tertiary adjunct of perfection, had a lonely little girl's heart. 

The captain and Chakotay took turns reminded her that she had to be patient with Seven, that Seven didn't know how rude she was, that she didn't have the same experience interacting with others, and B'Elanna got it, really, on the level where her heart was quiet and her head was in charge. They all made allowances for Seven because she'd been a hostage when she should have been learning that it really wasn't polite to burst into the engine room and change things without asking. Even when they were good changes, because, yes, sometimes, they were good changes. The Borg modifications to the secondary EPS processors were more efficient than the Starfleet sanctioned traditional settings. 

Naomi was probably learning just that style of engineering, and that was fine. She often said she wanted to be a Starfleet officer (who didn't when you were on a ship where your only role models were Starfleet, assimilated-into Starfleet Maquis, a cook-Ambassador-trader-morale officer, and a former Borg?). Naomi Wildman was being well-raised by just about everyone on _Voyager_ except B'Elanna, and that was great. It was a ship full of reasonably bright people, many of whom loved children, or had children and knew much about their education. B'Elanna did not count herself in that group and waited for Naomi to turn up in engineering, ready for her first day of Academy-level training, which would probably happen any time in the next five years. 

She was then more surprised than anyone when Naomi arrived in engineering one evening, during Gamma shift, with tears running down her face. She tried to cover it up, of course, but B'Elanna was acutely aware of what it was like to try and hide your tears from an adult you just didn't want to talk to, and said nothing about them. 

"Should you be in your quarters?" she said, keeping her eyes on her work. Engineering was quiet, just her and the night duty team of Ensign Vorik and Lieutenant Nicoletti. Nothing dangerous was anywhere near her desk and the corner Naomi had placed herself in. 

Naomi wiped her nose on her sleeve. "I'm required to regenerate at twenty-one hundred hours."

B'Elanna glanced up at the chronometer. If the kid wanted to talk like a Borg, maybe she wanted to be treated like a Borg. "Twenty-one hundred hours passed five hours ago. Why is your regeneration cycle incomplete?" She turned in her chair to face Naomi, on the pretext of choosing a laser spanner. 

"I had a bad dream."

"Have you had bad dreams before?"

Naomi nodded, wrapping her arms tightly around her knees. "Yes."

"First time you've come to engineering to solve them." 

"The computer said you were in engineering."

B'Elanna nearly dropped her PADD on top of the laser spanner she'd been pretending to need. "Me?"

"Neelix is on a mission with the captain, my mom's on survey mission for edible plants with Command Chakotay."

"Who's watching you?" 

"The Doctor was, but he had to go to sickbay. He thought I was asleep so it wasn't important. I can't get into trouble when I'm asleep."

There was some logic to that but it didn't explain why she'd been looking for B'Elanna, of all people. 

"Seven was busy?"

"She doesn't understand nightmares. Not ones without monsters in them."

B'Elanna left her chair and headed for the replicator. "I'm having hot chocolate, would you like some?"

"I want marshmallows, but not cream." 

"Oh?" 

"The cream always gets on my nose and my chin, then I have to wash."

B'Elanna ordered from the replicator, putting marshmallows in her own, just to be more accessible to the girl. "I hated washing when I was your age."

"Really? I'm three."

"I was pretty developed when I was three. Klingons grow quickly, even half-Klingons. I stopped being the cute kind of little kid much faster than my dad wanted."

Naomi clung to her cup. "Were there any other half-Klingons?"

"There's some. The Federation has people of all kinds of-" she paused, trying to come up with a good explanation. 

"Genetic backgrounds."

B'Elanna sat down on the floor, behind her own desk, leaning on the bulkhead next to Naomi. "All kinds of genetic backgrounds. There were two half-human, half-Vulcans at the Academy with me, a woman who was Betazoid and human was in my science classes first year. I even met a man who was half-Betazoid, half-Vulcan. He could sense your emotions if he was near to you, and he was the hardest person to fool in martial arts training."

"Did you know any Katarians?"

"There were two in my year, three in the year above me. I had Wilderness Survival class with Seskrengul, and I remember having to detangle her head spikes from the tent ropes."

Naomi smiled over her cocoa. "I get mine stuck in my shirts all the time. I have to--" she started to gesture, putting her cocoa at risk and B'Elanna grabbed her cocoa to keep it safe. "When I get dressed, I have to put a hand over my spikes so my mom can pull my shirt on. If I forget, my shirt gets stuck and I got holes in my red shirt and my blue and yellow shirt."

"Can your mom fix the holes?"

Naomi shook her head and reached for her cocoa. "She said she'd try, but she's really busy. They're just sitting in her closet."

"This planet has everyone pretty busy, doesn't it?"

"Neelix hasn't been back to _Voyager_ in three days. Mom comes home and goes to sleep and thinks I'm still sleeping but I can't sleep at night. Not the whole night anyway."

"Nightmares?"

Naomi reached for her cocoa and B'Elanna handed it back. "They're not really nightmares." With sugar in her system, she was brave now. "They're stupid."

B'Elanna plucked a marshmallow from her cocoa and ate it off her fingers. "When I first came on _Voyager_ I had stupid dreams about the captain coming into engineering and finding out the warp core was full of tribbles and it was all my fault. She'd pick one up and hold it out at me and the tribble wouldn't know what to do, does it purr because I'm human or squeal at me because I'm Klingon?" 

"And?"

"Sometimes in the dream, the captain picks up two and one squeals and the other purrs. It's confusing."

"It sounds confusing." Naomi fished marshmallows out of her cup and licked her fingers clean of melting sticky goo. "Which one are you?"

"Both. I mean, I've never met a tribble."

Naomi yawned. "Me either. Are you more Klingon or human?"

"Depends on where I am. When I was in the Maquis, I had to be Klingon because I was always fighting. Always angry. When I came here, I couldn't be angry, at least not as much as I wanted to be. Humans don't get angry all the time. Starfleet doesn't get angry unless it's for a good reason and I'm not used to waiting for good reasons." 

"I get angry, and it's not for okay, grown up reasons. Sometimes I get angry about going to bed." 

B'Elanna set her cup down and to her surprise, Naomi slipped into the space between her side and her arm. She held her close, without knowing if she was doing the right thing. Naomi sighed, seemingly comfortable. "I get angry about going to bed. I have too much work sometimes."

"I have work, but I'm not allowed to stay up and do it." 

"What kind of work do you have?" 

"Warp field dynamics," Naomi said, yawning again. Her eyes were fluttering, but she was trying to keep them open. 

"Really?"

"Sometimes, and algebra, and botany, but plants are harder than animals. Their cells are all weird." 

"What have you learned about warp field dynamics?"

"Lots," Naomi said, mumbling through sleepy lips. "Without the right reso- resonance, the warp field collapses."

B'Elanna set their cups aside, so she could deal with them later. "Come on, I'll show you." 

Naomi lifted her arms instead of standing up, so B'Elanna picked her up. She was surprisingly heavy. 

"Resonance refers to the frequency where the warp field best transfers energy. Some are better and the warp field oscillates- moves back and forth- better." The lift whisked them both up to the second level and she walked over to the console. Switching Naomi to her hip, she programmed a series of resonance tests. 

First, the warp core hummed, like a chord. Then it began to pulse, becoming discordant. 

"That's wrong," Naomi said, resting her head on B'Elanna's shoulder. "It sounds bad."

"What should we do to fix it?" 

Naomi leaned over, looking at the console. B'Elanna had split the warp field into twin oscillations, so they interfered with each other instead of working together to power the ship. 

"You have to put them back together. The lines--"

"Oscillations."

"They're crossing over each other."

Naomi slipped from B'Elanna's arms and stood in front of the console. "How do I get them not to cross?"

"How do you think?"

"Change this--" she said, pointing at the frequency indicator. 

B'Elanna tapped the console. "So change it. You say what I did to make it fall out of resonance."

"You did this," Naomi said, changing the frequency by a few megaherz. She tapped it again, encouraged as the popping, shivering sound of the warp field began to hum, then still into a smooth sound. 

"I love that," B'Elanna said, smiling down. "That's the good sound. That's how you know everything's right on the ship. It's together, whole even though it's made of different resonances. They're complimentary, so the field is stronger. " 

Naomi reached up and grabbed her hand. "This is what you do, to not have bad dreams?" 

"That and I keep the warp core tribble free."

That made Naomi laugh and B'Elanna picked her up again. 

"Tell you what. I'll tell the Doctor that with me, and take you back to your quarters."

"Can't I stay with you?"

B'Elanna brought them back to the lift and chuckled. "Even I don't sleep here."

"I could go to your quarters and have a sleepover. Sometimes I have those with Neelix."

"My quarters?"

"Are they full of weapons?" Naomi asked, awake again. "Do you have a bat'leth?"

B'Elanna waved goodnight to Vorik. "No. No bat'leth."

"Do you wish you had one?"

"Sometimes." 

"For monsters?"

"It's useful in the holodeck. Nothing takes out a holographic monster faster than a bat'leth."

"Really?" 

B'Elanna started telling a story about her mother's calisthenics programmes before she even thought about it. She didn't think much about her mother, but she remembered how much she'd admired the way her mother held the bat'leth and how everything fell before her blade. Somewhere between engineering and her quarters, Naomi fell asleep and didn't wake, even when B'Elanna put her down on the bed. She tucked her in, digging the stuffed targ Tom had given her as a joke out of her closet and snuggling it up next to the little girl. 

She tapped her commbadge. "Torres to Tuvok." He'd be in command if the captain and commander were both away. 

"Tuvok here." 

"Sorry to bother you, Naomi Wildman came looking for someone to have a sleepover with. She's in my bed now and I'll bring her back in the morning."

"Acknowledged, Lieutenant. I was not aware you had volunteered to watch the child."

B'Elanna looked down at Naomi and freed some of her hair from where it had tangled in her cranial ridges. She really was sweet when she was asleep. "I guess I have now."

"I will inform the Doctor and Ensign Wildman, should she contact the ship. Sleep well, Lieutenant." 

"Thanks Tuvok." 

She stripped off her uniform, put on her pyjamas and crawled into bed next to her surprise guest. Tomorrow, they'd have to have pancakes. She had enough replicator rations left, and if Crewman Chell was still filling in for Neelix, she might even be able to get them from the galley. Naomi might not need another teacher, but maybe she needed a friend, someone who knew what it was like to look at all the smooth, human foreheads and wonder what her other half had been, where her differences came from, and what that part of her was. 

She was two halves, like Naomi was, and maybe the child needed to talk about that. Could she do it? Could she talk about being Klingon and human? Of course she could. No one needed to be alone and she could help. She'd been the odd one.

And she could make sure not everything Naomi learned about engineering was Borg technique. She could slip some Maquis skills in there, something like that would really help her stand out at the Academy.

When they all got home. If they got home. Maybe Naomi would end up working for her someday in engineering, holding together a fragile starship as they fought their way back. She'd have to counteract some of the Borg influence, if only for her own sanity. She could do that. It might even be fun.


End file.
